Mindful parenting intervention for parents of children with skin conditions: a single group experimental cases series

Background: Parents of children with eczema or psoriasis experience high levels of parenting stress, which can negatively impact their child's mental and physical health. Aims: We aimed to investigate the effectiveness, feasibility and acceptability of a mindful parenting intervention for parents of children with eczema or psoriasis. Method: Seven parents of children (4-12 years old) with eczema or psoriasis took part in an 8-week mindful parenting group intervention. A single-case experimental design was adopted, whereby parents completed daily idiographic measures of parenting stress related to their child's skin condition. Parents also completed standardised questionnaires measuring their parenting stress, depression, anxiety and quality of life, and children completed a quality of life measure, at four time points: baseline, pre-intervention, post-intervention and 6-week follow-up. Parents provided qualitative feedback after the intervention. Results: All parents completed the intervention and showed improvements in idiographic measures of parenting stress from baseline to follow-up. Improvements in parenting stress were larger at follow-up than post-intervention, suggesting the benefits of intervention continue beyond the intervention. Six of seven parent-child dyads showed improvement in at least one of the wellbeing measures, from pre-intervention to post-intervention or follow-up. Feasibility was demonstrated through good participant retention, adherence to home practice, and treatment fidelity. Acceptability was demonstrated through positive parent evaluations of the intervention. Conclusions: Mindful parenting can be an effective, feasible and acceptable intervention for parents of children with eczema or psoriasis. Future studies should attempt to replicate the findings through randomised controlled trials.